Challenges facing psychology departments

Linda SmithIndiana University

“to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going”

“to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going”

But how do you do that, where is the field going?

1. Signs of fundamental change in the discipline2. How PBS at Indiana is being challenged by and is responding to these changes3. Is Psychology at the end of a 150 year run?

Signs of change

who is doing psychology?

mechanisms and principles of behavior and intelligence (all the topics one would see in an introductory psychology text)

Who is doing psychology?

• K. Gold, M. Doniec, C. Crick, and B. Scassellati.(2009) Robotic Vocabulary Building Using Extension Inference and Implicit Contrast., Artificial Intelligence Journal. Vol. 173(1), p. 145-166. 2009.

• K. Gold & B. Scassellati (2010). Using Probabilistic Reasoning over Time to Self-Recognize. Robotics and Autonomous Systems

• Shic & B. Scassellati. (2010) A behavioral analysis of robotic models of visual attention. International Journal of Computer Vision

• Robotocists like Brian Scassellati at Yale

Who is doing psychology?

• Honey CJ, Sporns O, Cammoun L, Gigandet X, Thiran JP, Meuli R, Hagmann P (2009) Predicting human resting-state functional connectivity from structural connectivity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106, 2035-2040.

• Bullmore, E.T, Sporns, O. (2009) Complex brain networks: graph-theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, 186-198.

• Physicists like Olaf Sporns at Indiana

Who is doing psychology?(this is from Reviews of modernphysics (cited byGoldstone and Todd in an experimental and computational paper on swarm behavior in humans)

Who is doing psychology?

• Neurobiologists• Computational linguists• Experimental philosophers• Law Professors• MDs in Behavioral Medicine• Physicists!• Roboticists!

It is not our own little guild of like-minded and like-trained any more. Breakout advances can be coming from anywhere and the discoveries that advance knowledge will determine future of psychology whether or not they are made by a psychology PhD in a psychology department

Signs of change

where “psychology” is being published

APA, APS, the Psychonomic Society Journals, Archives of Psychiatry, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

(how did we know these journals were “good” because the members of our guild –the folks we respected –told us they were)

Signs of change

where “psychology” is being published

APA, APS, the Psychonomic Society Journals, Archives of Psychiatry, JPSP

Neuron, PNAS, PloS, Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Experimental Brain Research, Law and Psychology Review, Computational Linguistics, Frontiers in Cognition, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Affective Behavioral Neuroscience, IEEE journals, Neuroscience Letters, Schizophrenia Research

Where should you put a great paper?Psychological Review, Psychological Science, PloS One?

The SJR indicator measures the scientific influence of the average article in a journal, it expresses how central to the global scientific discussion an average article of the journal is. Cites per Doc. (2y) measures the scientific impact of an average article published in the journal, it is computed using the same formula that journal impact factor ™ (Thomson Reuters).

Where should you put a great paper?Psychological Review, Psychological Science, PloS One?

Psychological Review PloS One

Psychological ScienceOpen access (authors pay) vs. traditional Journals (readers pay)Psychology vs. Broad cross-discipline journalsOne field versus centrifugal forces pulling us apart

(papers in Child Development and Cell?)Guild reputation or objective measures like h factors

Where is psychology published?

•Open access (authors pay) vs. traditional Journals (readers pay)•Psychology vs. Broad cross-discipline journals•One field versus centrifugal forces pulling us apart

(papers in Child Development and Cell?)•Guild reputation or objective measures like h factors

What is getting funded?

•“Transformational”, “translational”, “interdisciplinary”, “multidisciplinary”, “multileveled,” “integrative”, large and open data sets, neural bases

e.g., human genomics, behavioral genetics, and human imaging group grants on addiction

e.g., the human connectome

Who is getting jobs?

Last year: 69% of jobs in psychology* in research 1 institutions asked for more thanbehavioral experimental research (computational, neural, human genomics, genetics, atypical populations)

*all job listings on PBS Indiana joblistservefor our graduate students and post-docs as codedby key words

• in the interplay between behavioral, computational, and neural approaches• integrative neuroscience -- from molecular to systems to behavioral to cognitive

to social neuroscience• from genes to proteins to behavior to developmental process and back• massive data streams, nested scales• complex systems, connectivity (neural, social)• in the integration of advances in basic science with applications through

translational research (medical, educational, technical)

• If you try to stop the future, you will lose

Signs of change reflect advances in science

Change brings challenges

• department structure• graduate training• research support and infrastructure (and teaching loads)• traditional views of psychology departments• the existence of psychology itself

Changes at Indiana

One change, as a consequence or all this at Indiana,our name: Psychological and Brain Sciences (2003)

With the name change, concerted growth in cognitive neuroscienceand in molecular and cellular neuroscience

We had a core in systems, goal was to both go down to lower mechanisticlevels and up to connect to human behavioral research

an area-less dept(not quite there yet but trying)

admissions, training of graduate students

Funded research grants (training grantsexcluded)

•5 training grants (2NSF, 3NIH) allIntegrative multi-level and include folksacross traditional areas

•Graduate training by committee

•All hiring department wide, not by committee,No replacements (75% yes of all faculty to hire, all search committees broad dept representation)

brave hiringis there a traditional core? If not by area then by what?

• in questions?• in methods?• in levels of analysis?

We don’t want fads, we don’t want “cool” things of the moment, we cannot actually predict where science and advances are going….

brave hiring (

(from the PBS policy committee report, Fall 2009)

• We need to embrace the field-changing advances that are occurring rapidly in all areas of the psychological and brain sciences. The current rapid rate of new discoveries is resulting from the maturity of behavioral and cognitive approaches, from new insights into neural mechanisms at the molecular and cellular level, from new technologies such as brain imaging and molecular genomics, and from the application of advanced computational approaches and mathematical theories that study large data sets and groups of individuals.

• Because science depends on community and interactions among researchers with different expertise and who study problems from different levels of analysis, hires should increase the connectivity (decrease path length, increase small world structure) of research groups in the department.

2009 plan

1. embrace the field-changing advances and levels of analyses2. actively pursue interdisciplinary and translational research3. link to larger interdisciplinary groups and programs on the campus 4. increase in size to around 60 faculty5. hire to decrease link length from any faculty member to any other

PhDs in computer science, in biomedical engineering, in physics, in biology, an MD, as well as PhDs in psychology

Areas: social neuroscience, neurodevelopmentMolecular neuroscience, behavioral development, cognitive neuroscience, computational linguistics, social networks

undergraduate education (more hierarchichal, more integrative)

• the required core– social, neuroscience, cognitive– 2 labs– 1 capstone

• service learning• honors thesis• senior integrative lab

Real teaching labs

a big science mentalitybuilding shared space

• labs (size and infrastructure)– shared cutting edge (expensive) facilities– multimodal methods cog. neuro (eeg, eyetracking in magnet, tms, optical

imaging etc.)– multimodal social interactions (eeg, multi-person motion capture and

eyetracking)

a big science mentality? can we really pull it off?

• labs (size and infrastructure)• teaching requirements (1400 majors, 50 faculty, a 2 and 1 load that needs

to be 1 and 1)• tenure requirements• start-up

not your father’s –not even your – psychology department

But if we don’t, can psychology last?central hubs and centrifugal forces

– Neurobiology/neuroscience– robotics– computational neuroscience– Physics, informatics (many body behaviors and large data sets)

can psychology last?

– neurobiology– neuropsychology– robotics– computational neuroscience– Behavioral genetics and human genomics– Social networks and large group behavior– Computational linguistics

bring it under one roof, psychology should own the integrative question,